Twenty Dollars
by Wikitiki99
Summary: Brad and Gordie get lost in the woods.  Brad/Gordie, former one-sided Gordie/Kick


"This is all your fault!"

"My fault?" Brad turns, the rich brat's whiny little voice still pricking at his ears.

He's already frowning. Gibble's been frowning all day. But now he frowns harder and blows at his bangs and wow, is this kid actually pouting like a _girl_?

"Of course it's your fault!" He stomps his foot, and Brad assumes he's actively trying to be as whiny and girly as possible just to annoy him. "It's your fault we're lost, it's your fault we don't have cell reception, it's your fault we're in the woods!"

"I'm not the one who wanted to go to the old abandoned amusement park in the middle of the woods!"

"And I'm not the one who said he knew the way like the back of his hand and then got us lost!"

"I'm not the one who believed me!"

"That doesn't even make sense! Ugh!" He kicks at the ground, sending some leaves and rocks Brad's way. "You can forget about me paying you for helping me, Older Buttowski."

"Geez, I'll find it!" His voice loses its gusto. "It's, uh, you know. Somewhere around here."

"I don't even care anymore! I just want to go home!" Gordie promptly contradicts his own words by plopping down on the ground and folding his arms over his chest, pouting again.

Brad stands and stares at him for a moment. He looks up at the sun, looking dangerously close to setting, and then back down to Gordie.

"Well, good luck with that!"

"Wait, what?" he squeaks - _squeaks_ - and grabs at Brad's pant leg as he attempts to walk past him. "Where you think you're going?"

"Home."

"Could you hold on for one second? I'm tired!"

"Hey, if there's nothing in it for me, I'm not waiting around for your girly little butt."

Gordie smacks the ground, making this weird sound of annoyance. "Fine. I'll pay you ten bucks to wait for five minutes."

Brad looks back at the sun. And then back at Gordie.

"Nah."

"'Nah?' What do you mean, 'nah'?"

"I mean it's not worth it. I'm not getting stuck out here in the dark for ten bucks."

Instead of getting up, Gordie lays back, his torso hitting the ground with a small thud. "I'll give you fifty."

Brad doesn't answer. Instead, he asks, "How much do you weigh?"

That gets him to sit up. "Excuse me?"

"I asked you how much you weigh."

"Why?" He wraps his arms around his stomach like he's trying to keep Brad from seeing it. What is he even doing or thinking.

Brad rolls his eyes. "I can give you a piggy back ride for a while. For two hundred bucks."

"A hundred."

"I'm not lowering it."

"Is it because I'm fat? I'm not fat, you know! I eat right sometimes and I work out like ten times a day and-"

"I'm leaving. Are you coming or not?"

Gordie squeaks again and leaps up and does this weird thing where he tries to throw himself into Brad's arms. Brad pries the arms wrapped around his neck away. "Guh, no, you dweeb, on my back."

Minutes later, Gordie has finally managed to get himself up on Brad's back and they're - well, Brad's - walking once again.

Oddly enough (!), Gordie is the one who is whining. He's whining about the rapidly setting sun, he's whining about Brad going too fast and then going to slow, he's whining simply about the way Brad is walking. He whimpers something about not being fat every time Brad makes any sort of sound of effort or attempts to readjust Gordie's clinging limbs.

"Okay, I'll pay you ten bucks to not make any more noise until we're out of here."

"Ew, no! I don't need your gross poor person money!" Gordie sort of does this thing where he tries to kick Brad while still having his legs wrapped around his torso. It turns out to be a rather uncomfortable action and he stops immediately. Brad stays rather silent about it for a good minute or two.

He's not going to do it again, but then Brad says, "If you do that again, I'm dropping you," and he really is not ever going to do that again.

When it's finally dark, Brad notices Gibble has wrapped his arms around him way too tightly and his legs are probably as wrapped as they can be without being too horribly awkward. He pulls on his arms, scowling. Gordie doesn't whine or really respond at all. If he's somehow managed to fall asleep-

"Hey! Rich dweeb!"

"What?" Oh, there it is. That whiny voice, awake as anything.

"You getting offa my back any time soon?"

Brad half expects him to go off on another "I'm not fat!" lecturewhine, but instead he whimpers and somehow manages to hold on tighter. "What? It's dark!"

Brad rolls his eyes. But he is right, there's only a sliver of moonlight to see by. Doesn't make him any less heavy.

He doesn't say that, though, because, geez, what would he do if he said that? Instead he says, "You can walk. Nothing's going to eat you." He knows he can't exactly make promises, but what does Richie here know?

"How do you know? I bet I taste pretty good!" Brad chokes a little at this.

But he recovers. Sort of. "Yeah, well I bet your girly perfume is attracting a bunch of man-eating animals as we speak."

"Ugh, you have no taste! I bet your poor person nose can't even comprehend this manly scent I'm wearing! You smell like you've been rolling around in a dump truck."

"That's what a real man smells like!"

"At least Buttowski doesn't smell completely horrendous like you." And wow that's probably the most awkward thing he could have said. Well, it's up there. "And I bet he wouldn't have gotten lost!"

Brad just grunts because how do you even respond to that.

Well, he knows some ways. After some careful thought, he says, "Well, at least you never tried to make out with me."

Gordie jolts off of him completely and wow he actually punches him. It's not the hardest punch he's ever received, Kick probably punched him harder than that when he was a baby, but it's surprising for Gordie. "Who told you about that?"

"Kick told me, idiot."

It's hard to see in the moonlight, but his face looks absolutely red. "Why would he tell you that?"

"Because when some weird rich brat he thought hated him was suddenly grabbing him and trying to get his mack on with him, he sort of wanted his awesome big bro to know."

"But why you?" He cannot even comprehend this, Brad can tell. So Brad just rolls his eyes and starts walking again.

Gordie scampers behind him, trying to catch up. He ends up totally tripping over himself and into Brad, but retreats back quickly enough. "It wasn't even that great, you know! He sort of kissed back, but he really sucked at it. I bet he didn't tell you he kissed me back, but it seriously wasn't anything speci-"

He stops talking because Brad has turned around and is looking at him like he might hurt him and maybe throw up while he's hurting him. "T-Too much information."

"What do you mean, I'm just-"

"Stop. Now."

"What, I-"

"Never talk about what it's like to kiss my little brother ever again. Please."

"Well, you're the one who brought it up."

"I don't even-"

"You should have taught him to be a better kisser!"

"I do- Okay we're going to stop talking about kissing my brother right now! Do you even know how awkward and creepy you are?"

"I am not! I'm not the one who brought all of this up! I'd forgotten it, completely! Yeah, totally forgotten. And you remembered and brought it up! Who's the creepy one here, huh? Huh?"

And then without really thinking about it much, Brad's hands are somewhere on Gordie's head and their lips are together and everything is very pleasantly quiet and also he's totally kissing Gordon Gibble and what is going on.

Gordie is kissing back, too, which isn't very surprising, Brad guesses. Brad attempts to figure out what in the world got him to this point, and all he can come up with is that Gordie had said "kissing" a lot and he really wanted him to shut up and also Brad might find his mannerisms and looks and everything both horribly annoying and also maybe sort of kind mildly insanely attractive.

They pull away and just look at each other for a moment, wearing matching looks of shock.

"Well, uh-" But whatever Brad was going to say never gets said, because Gordie's back to kissing him and Brad likes it and how old is this kid even. Brad doesn't think about that fact that he's young enough to have been interested in his brother because he's not thinking about his brother at all because that's just not something you do when you're making out with someone.

Gordie's smiling a little when they finally stop for real. It's kind of nice, Brad guesses (if by "nice" you mean strangely very handsome).

"We should, get, you know, going-"

"Oh, yeah, uh. Yeah. We should."

They remain relatively undisturbed as they walk, one of them jumping over a noise or the movement of a small animal every now and then. And then Brad does something he's never even done with a girl he's known for so little time.

He slides his hand around Gordie's, lacing their fingers together. Gordie's hands are soft and kind of big. Gordie leans against him a little. There's something about his overly fast, faltering pace that tells Brad Gordie is tired, but he's not even making whiny noises, let alone complaining verbally.

After a long while, though, he speaks. "Hey, uh, can I get on your back again?"

Brad doesn't really know how to answer. He stays silent for a good while, contemplating his choice in girls. And, er, boys now, too, apparently? Regardless of gender he suspects his "type" is kind of, um. Different.

It's the type that wants him to shower her (or him?) with gifts and attention, the type that can be kind of nasty sometimes. Okay, most of the time. The type that he gets the urge to shut up with kisses and hold hands with in public (or in the woods where all the bears and nocturnal woodland creatures can see him).

"Yeah," he says, even though he's tired and almost every part of his body aches. "Yeah, whatever you want."


End file.
